{"id":359,"date":"2010-02-23T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T13:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=359"},"modified":"2018-08-21T09:08:03","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T13:08:03","slug":"worker-strikes-in-france-and-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/02\/23\/worker-strikes-in-france-and-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Worker strikes in France and Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday saw numerous worker strikes taking place\u00a0in the EU’s two most\u00a0important economies: France and Germany.\u00a0 In France\u00a0workers of oil giant, Total, went on strike.\u00a0 While in Germany\u00a0employees of the airline Lufthansa\u00a0went striking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Analysis:<\/strong> Several weeks ago there was a worldwide fear that spread throughout the bond markets regarding the economic health of Greece.\u00a0 Additional fear was mounting because of the troubles in Italy, Portugal and Spain.\u00a0 The fear abated when the EU made a shallow announcement.\u00a0 The gist of the announcement was: don’t worry we’ll continue monitoring the situation.\u00a0 Quite literally nothing specific was announced.\u00a0 To me, this is proof that professional investors (bond traders) continue to ignore salient facts.\u00a0 However, I am certain that a part of the reason for the tepid response to the EU announcement by market participants was the belief that the EU would response if it had to respond.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday’s strikes however are a strong indication that the two largest economies in the EU, France and Germany, will be unable to act to help Greece.\u00a0 The reason is that these strikes create internal political pressure for the nations involved.\u00a0 Likely this will result in navel-gazing for each country that will severely hamper the ability of the EU to respond to any of its members’ debt crises in a unified manner.\u00a0 Striking workers at home will want dollars spent on themselves and not on workers in a foreign country, albeit another EU country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Importance grade:<\/strong> 7; I continue to monitor the brewing\u00a0European debt crisis.\u00a0 At this point it feels as if the EU is in “tread water” mode.\u00a0 However, it would not take much to shock the debt markets of Europe into worldwide European debt flight.\u00a0 The striking workers have just decreased the ability of the EU to coordinate a response to any debt defaults.\u00a0 Not good.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday saw numerous worker strikes taking place\u00a0in the EU’s two most\u00a0important economies: France and Germany.\u00a0 In France\u00a0workers of oil giant, Total, went on strike.\u00a0 While in Germany\u00a0employees of the airline Lufthansa\u00a0went striking. Analysis: Several weeks ago there was a worldwide fear that spread throughout the bond markets regarding the economic health of Greece.\u00a0 Additional fear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}